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MILAN - Half an hour's drive away from Milan's sumptuous fashion shows, hundreds of Romanian Gypsies who came to Italy seeking a better existence live in a rat-infested camp.
Since New Year's Eve when their trailers burnt to ashes in a fire at Milan's largest Roma camp, 50 families in the suburban shanty town of 800 in Via Triboniano have lived in squalor.
Drawn since about 1999 to a small illegal settlement in an abandoned parking lot next to Milan's main graveyard, these Roma did not wait for Romania to join the European Union to head west in search of a better life near this wealthy European city.
In the town centre workmen polished fingerprints off the black glass facade to prepare Dolce & Gabbana's fashion show venue last week, but in the Gypsies' sprawling suburban favela there is no running water, electricity flows only intermittently and they share a dozen chemical toilets.
"I am disillusioned. I want to go back home," said Marian Marin, 23, as he tried to warm up from a street bonfire after the blaze gutted his caravan.
"Back in Romania I was earning only €100 ($187) a month as a construction worker. I came here to send something to my family. Now I don't care about anything," said Marin, who now sleeps in the open.
Next to him, a woman wearing a colourful Gypsy headscarf cried out her resentment in the Romani language as the winter drizzle turned the camp's soil to filth.
The cause of the fire is unknown and arson has not been ruled out. But there is little pity from nearby residents, who say they are fed up by the misery and violence that came with the camp.
"Their stolen cars block our road and we live amid their human waste," said residents' spokeswoman Antonietta Spinella.
The Triboniano camp is the biggest of the nomad settlements in the Milan province, which host an estimated 6500 Roma of Italy's 120,000 total.
They survive by doing small masonry or cleaning jobs - if not by begging or stealing.
With angry neighbours calling for a barrier to be put up around the shanty town, the camp epitomises the hard choices faced by Milan and other European cities in hosting tens of thousands of poor, clannish and often illiterate Roma.
Since Romania joined the European Union on January 1, residents' fears that more Roma will swarm into Milan and other Italian cities have grown. Last month, locals torched tents that had been prepared for a new Roma camp in Opera, a Milan suburb.
Under pressure from civil rights groups, Milan's City Council has promised to equip the Triboniano camp with shipping containers made into homes, electricity and running water. But there will not be enough for everyone: the population of the camp has more than trebled since 2001.
"The Roma are contributing to make the situation even more chaotic by asking relatives to move in with them," said Pasquale Maggiore, who works with the Roma for Milan's local government.
The Council of Europe's human rights watchdog has said Italy lacks legal protection for the Roma, which it says is the ethnic minority that is most discriminated against in Europe.
Gypsy camps exist throughout Europe, but Council of Europe Roma expert Ivana D'Alessandro said standards in Italy were worse than in France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
"The camp is not a solution. The Romas need to be treated like any other homeless people," said Giorgio Bezzecchi, a Roma who heads Italy's charity Opera Nomadi.
Forcing the Gypsies to integrate is not easy. Most live with their extended families and refuse to mix with other Roma groups, let alone outsiders.
"The Roma are mysterious and closed people," said Sister Claudia Bioni, who has been working with them for more than 10 years.
A few Roma in Triboniano are willing to cut ties with their community to improve their lives: they conceal their ethnic identity at work to hold down jobs and save for a real home.
"I have not told my boss that I am a Roma. Nor has my wife, who is working as a cleaning lady three days a week," said Romanian-born Roma Alessandro, 30. "You say 'Roma', you say 'thief.' This is what people think."
- REUTERS
